


Married Life

by Aspidities



Series: Korrasami Week 2017 [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Children, Domestic Bliss, F/F, Fluff, Korrasami Week 2017, Modern AU, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspidities/pseuds/Aspidities
Summary: My submission for Day One of Korrasami Week 2017! The prompt is Married Life, so this is just a little slice of a normal evening home with the kids for the love bunnies. <3





	Married Life

Korra drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the Subaru, gritting her teeth as yet another slow merger drifted ultra-cautiously in front of her. _Just make a fucking decision_ , she swore internally, forcing herself not to say the words out loud. Behind her, there was a threatening thump of a plastic block against her seat rest. Hiroshi had not taken well to the baby podcast today; maybe it was too much Mozart and not enough Bach. Her son began a grumbling, unhappy wail, deep in his tiny chest, and he thrashed in his car seat, smashing his chubby brown hands against the brightly colored dragonfly-bunny plush toys dangling from its rim.

Hiroshi may have been given a Sato family name, but his temper was all Korra. She sighed, and switched the dial over to NPR, hoping a mindless soothing blather would calm him. “Settle down, grumpy boy.” She met his scrunched, tiny face in the mirror and pulled a happy grin. “Mama’s almost through this traffic and then you can be home and get your milk on.”

This promise was only met with an ear-splitting howl. A red block sailed past the center console to rattle against the dash and tumble to the passenger side floor. Korra arched a brow. “We’ve gotta work on the throwing things, but good arm, buddy.”

A half an hour of traffic hell later, and she was finally pulling into their driveway, narrowly avoiding Yasuko’s tricycle and a gaggle of strollers that they were often too exhausted to put in the garage. The neighborhood was peaceful and safe, anyway, and all the families looked out for each other, so Korra often joked that they should leave the strollers out for a ‘take one, leave one’ lending library service like the tiny bookshelf on their friend’s lawn down the block. It wouldn’t be out of place in their hippie-friendly, co-op style neighborhood, where everything from organic vegetables to well-intended breastfeeding advice was shared (often all too-freely and too publicly for her wife’s taste, but Korra didn’t mind).

The soft forest green house was tucked behind two majestic loblolly pines, with branches supporting a baby swing and a larger tire swing for Yasuko. Naga barked happily behind the backyard gate and Korra spared a moment to pat the large white Great Pyrenees fondly over the low fence as she hauled a sleeping Hiro out of his buckled seat and into her arms: the NPR had done the trick after all. She balanced her work bag on one shoulder and started up the path to the door before she realized she’d forgotten the grocery bag and had to double back. These late afternoon errand runs were death to her memory, lately. _Or maybe it’s just once you’re past thirty all your brain cells stop regenerating_ , Korra contemplated glumly as she fumbled for her keys under Hiro’s warm little bottom.

The door swung open before she could finish and her wife greeted her with a simple, elegant smile that always took her breath away, even in a messy bun with a smudge of paint on one cheek and her gold-rimmed glasses riding low on her nose. “Hi,” Asami lifted Hiro from her arms and deftly fingered the handle of the canvas grocery bag from her grasp at the same time, sliding close for a kiss on the cheek. “How was your day? Traffic looked like hell.”

“Traffic was hell.” Korra agreed, gratefully inhaling her wife’s coconut conditioned hair for a moment before stepping into the house, slipping her work bag onto the customary hook as she shook her coat off and began unlacing her boots. The stress of the traffic and the day of work on her construction site job was already leaving her as soon as she stepped in the door; her wife had that effect. Asami was already on her way to the kitchen with Hiro and the groceries but she called “Shoes on the rack!”, over her shoulder as she swept past. Korra rolled her eyes but guiltily complied: she had definitely been planning to leave them sprawled by the door, where she would inevitably stumble over them in the morning and wake the whole house. Asami knew her too well, after five years of marriage, and she couldn’t complain.

She followed her into the kitchen and greeted her daughter with a rushing hug, swinging the four-year old into the air as she kicked and screamed delightedly. Yasuko was working on a variety of colored blotches and blurs on a miniature of Asami’s canvas easel, next to her mother’s in the afternoon sunlight of the breakfast nook, with the table pushed back and a drop cloth placed over the tile.

“Mama, squibble!” Yasu explained, showing off her handiwork with purple-stained fingers. “Squibble inna backyard.”

“Squirrels,” Asami translated, cooing to Hiroshi as she laid him down in the pack-n-play and rolled it closer to the huge butcher block kitchen island, so her sleepy-eyed son could watch her movements as she placed the groceries for dinner away in their steel fridge. “She saw squirrels many times today, and we had to draw them, didn’t we, pumpkin?” Her dark-haired wife indicated the paint splatters on her smock and across her face and upper arms, smiling ruefully. “Although she got most of it on me and Jinora before she left.”

“Poor kid,” Korra chortled, thinking of their normally pristine babysitter. As much as she sometimes wished she could stay home full-time with their kids, having Asami able to work from home was far more complimentary to both their lifestyles, and days like this often reminded her how much effort it really took to keep up with an active toddler and a one year-old.

“How was the vibe at daycare when you picked him up?” Asami indicated Hiro, already rolling around on his side to look for objects to throw in the pack-n-play. “Did you see Sarah and Kelsey? Or Lindsey and Christa?” She rattled off a few more of their lesbian mommy couple friends but Korra was only half listening, jouncing Yasuko on her knee as she watched Asami’s deft hands slice a few bell peppers into strips, her long fingers separating them by color so that Yasu wouldn’t have to eat the ‘yucky green’ ones. Her wife was always lovely when she prepared a meal, and it made Korra’s mouth water in more ways than one, even now, after two children and years of marriage.

“Pretty good,” she replied through her romantic reverie, “Christa was there getting Freya, but Guillome said Sarah and Kelsey are back on the outs this week. He and Frederic are giving them 2:1 odds, better than Vegas at this point.” She nuzzled into Yasu’s hair, stage-whispering ‘ _Jackpot_!’, and tickling her calloused hands along her daughter’s tiny, squirming sides as she giggled and repeated what she could.

“Typical.” Asami shook her head sadly, tossing a diced onion into the hot oil of a black cast iron pan and stirring in the bell pepper strips with a wooden spoon. The smell filled the air, and Korra’s stomach grumbled as she sniffed appreciatively. The spoon smacked down as she lifted a half-raw onion from the hot pan, stinging her knuckles until she dropped it. “What is it with you and burning your fingers?” Her wife questioned mildly. “Quit it, let me cook it first.”

“It’s more fun when I steal it.” Korra explained, more to Yasu than Asami, but the four year-old was already impatiently wiggling to be put down. She let her daughter go and watched her run off to the living room, dragging her fire truck toy around the track Asami had built for her. “Did you manage to get any work done with the sitter here and Hiro at daycare?”

“Yep!” Asami grinned at her, the paint on her cheek and tendrils of black hair slipping loose from her bun only making her the more beautiful. “Got three new contracts and managed to even meet a deadline. I’m on a roll! It’s all Jinora, though. Girl is a _godsend_ for Yasuko; she just knows how to keep up with her.”

“Not an easy task.” They both shared a fond look at their black-haired, blue-eyed daughter, making siren noises to herself in the living room with one strap of her Baby Gap overalls hanging loose. “She takes after you.”

“Me?” Asami laughed, and the sound sent warm waves into Korra’s belly. “She’s so clearly your kid it takes my breath away. When she popped out I almost asked the doctors if you made a clone of yourself and had me impregnated with it.” She joked, and leaned backwards across the butcher block to steal a kiss, hands still on the pan.

“That was always the plan.” Korra teased. “But then Hiro came along and made me realize three of me is more than enough.” Their son had already fallen back asleep, a chubby fist tucked into his mouth, and Korra stroked his tousled brown head affectionately. She crept up behind Asami and put her head on her taller wife’s shoulder, swaying behind her as she cupped her hips.

“Never thought we’d be so lucky.” Asami admitted quietly, the motion of her spoon slowing as she slid the chicken into the pan. “Seeing other couples sometimes….makes me wonder why we’re the ones who got this far.”

 _Because I love you._ Korra knew that was the simplest answer, but not one Asami would accept. Her analytical mind sometimes needed a blueprint to latch onto; a formula rather than a simple sum. Show your work, was the credo of the Sato clan, and be prepared to back it up. So instead she buried her lips in the crook of Asami’s neck where her sweet scent was the strongest, and sighed against the soft skin there.

“I think because we keep trying.” She answered, cautious to put her words together. “Sometimes that’s all there is. Trying, and failing too, but the important part is that we know the other one is trying. Lots of couples I think try to make things work, but either they aren’t picturing the same ideals or they don’t have the same vision. You and I…we know what the future holds, and we aren’t afraid of it.”

That was the right thing to say, apparently. Asami turned in her arms and gifted her with a soft kiss, her hand curving around Korra’s rough jawline, her body melting back against her. In that moment, the first rush of passion that had ever existed between them came surging back, as it always had, like an old truck engine that refused to die, but came sputtering to life each spring, no matter how the snows had piled on it, or the animals nested in its springy seats.

Some things, no matter how they age, will always be young.

Eventually, a pepper sizzled in the oil and squirted a hot stream of juice onto Asami’s fingers, and she yelped, jumping slightly as they shared a laugh. Korra took the opportunity to steal a singing piece of onion and slip it into her mouth, burning her tongue as she happily crunched down. She stuck her tongue out to cool it and Asami made to whack her with the spoon, faux-menacing as she shook her fingers. From the living room, an exuberant cry and a resumed ‘weee-oooh’ revealed that Yasuko had managed to get her fire truck over the large loop, and as if in ecstatic sympathy, Hiro came awake with a wail, matching his sister’s siren noise in tone and pitch.

Korra stepped back, sighing, and went to tend her son, as Asami stirred the pan, humming softly to herself. She swung Hiro into her arms and he calmed, relaxing for once as she sat with him at the table, listening to the faintly-familiar melody. The sun began to spread into red-orange butter behind the pines, and as the warm kitchen filled with yellow light and the smell of cooking food, Korra held her son to her chest, heard her daughter playing, and could only be filled with love for the woman who had brought it all to her, the woman whose swaying hips moved with the half-remembered song.

Sometimes love is enough to fill mountains and swallow oceans, but other times it is a quiet mouse, perched on your soul while you look at the scene of your life, and the paths you took to get there.


End file.
